Author: Rob Cramer

Something has infected my family. It has taken over their lives and is the focus of their waking hours. It came from overseas, but it will soon be found in great numbers across North America. It has dragged innocent victims into twisted torture that silences their vocal chords, but also causes them to shout in agony moments later. What is this new evil? It’s called The Game and my family…

Rawrrr! Avast, ye landlubber…..I can’t do this. I can’t write an entire review of Piña Pirata in the voice of a pirate ship captain who also happens to be an anthropomorphic tiger. You knew what I was doing, right? I thought I made it painfully obvious. Piña Pirata starts out so simply that while reading the rulebook, I was looking to see if I had missed anything important. Play a…

History is not my strong suit, but I did help write and perform in a puppet show about the life and times of Joseph Stalin for a middle school project. It was a weird marriage of light-hearted fun with devastating facts of one of the most ruthless men of all time. I got a B. I have no idea if I stepped over a line, but I do know…

The World’s Fair reminds me of huge spectacle and incredible innovation. Iconic landmarks and advances in technology have sprung forth at the Fair through the years, from the Eiffel Tower to the Space Needle. But the 1893 World’s Fair stands out above the rest in a big way: it just became a board game. Just ignore all of these other ones. World’s Fair 1893 from designer J. Alex Kevern and…

One of the first college classes I took centered on the study of Westerns in film. The Searchers, Shane, and High Noon filled up the screen and … I fell asleep during most of them. It wasn’t that those movies are boring; on the contrary, those movies are really great. I was just so tired from PARTYING SO HARD, BRO. Those days are behind me, but now I’ve found…

As a kid, if I ever got a toy armed with spring-loaded missiles, those missiles would soon be lost in target practice against cups and other action figures. It was so cool to knock something over from a distance, even if it took fifty tries to make it happen. The flying projectile and the clatter of plastic brought lots of joy to what would otherwise be boring afternoons. But…

Do you remember when Bejeweled came out and it took over every aspect of your life? No? Just me? I have a lot in common with birds, in that if I see something shiny I latch onto it and don’t let go. Bejeweled was better than real jewels, with shattering combos and shimmering matches flooding the screen without all the expense and moral ambiguity. Did they use blood diamonds…

How long can you hold your breath? My record is four minutes, but that was above water and I was super bored. Now imagine you are a deep sea diver and your air runs out. How long do you think you could hold your breath then? Deep Sea Adventure will help you answer that question, but believe me, the answer is a lot shorter than you’d like it to be….

In Monster Allegiance, players control a hand of mystical beasts and creatures with different strengths and weaknesses. Looking at the pixel art, it calls to my mind the early days of Pokemon, with scrawny lizards evolving into fire-breathing dragons to destroy other monsters. Each fighter has an element type (Water, Fire, Air, Earth, and Lightning), Rarity, and strength values on each side of their card. Every element type of monster distributes…

The knight crested the ridge, out of breath from lugging his heavy suit of armor up a steep hill. But his people needed protection, and duty outweighs comfort. As he regained his strength, his eyes focused on a small pair of soldiers in the distance. One soldier seemed to light a torch and touch it to the large metal tube next to the men. Before the knight could even realize…